Time Comes Loop

I don't know how many months thos painted pallets have been sat in our bedroom waiting to be put together... Must be getting on for six months. They have become features in their own right, festooned with clothes and other accoutrements.

F noticed last weekend that with the change in weather and our bed currently being against an outside wall with no headboard, that our breathing and sweating is causing condensation to form between the bed and the wall. We have promised ourselves that the bed will go up this weekend and we will sort the bedroom out.

I think the tide has turned now Samhain is done with. It needs to have turned because there are things we have been putting off but need to accomplish. Maybe I should right a list... Maybe I should try not to get sucked into family trees and the past.

If I won the lottery I would spend a fair bit of time researching. there are so many records out there. A lot is on the internet these days but if you can go to local records offices you can find out so very much more and I love it..... It brings history alive. It also explains things within my family in some cases. Events that happened generations past do rumble on down through the generations, whether we see it or not.

My Great Great Great Grandfather was a little on the dodgy side, he served time for breakig hedges, stealing wood and stealing hurdles. He had three children. The oldest, J also served time and for more serious things than his Father too. Assaults, maliciously attacking doors and then heartbreakingly, in 1851 he was sentenced to one month for stealing a loaf of bread. Much information is available on this, including his short defence. He was hungry, he had had no work for 17 weeks and had survived the last three days on 1 penny's worth of bread. Viva the Industrial Revolution.....

J lived with his sister and brother and they obviously did their best to look after each other, but even so. S was the next oldest and she had an illegitimate child. I am not sure if it was the baby's father or someone else but she set fire to this man's house, with him and several other people in it....

The younger brother, my great great grandfather was a rat catcher and not surprisingly was also in trouble with the law. He even has his photo attached to his records.... He took the money offered to join the local militia. The militias were being raised to cover the duties at home that the regular forces could not complete as they were fighting in the Crimean. He deserted and was sentenced. However, there is a book that says some were recruited illegaly and had to be released. Some of these however later took a second financial bribe and signed back up again. I would loe to know where he fit in in all of this and one day I shall find the appropriate records.... See where he did go and what he did do. i bet he only signed up through hunger as well...

My Great Great Grandfather's children all put him down as various professions on their marriage certificates - the most amusing being gamekeeper! The though of a gamekeeper keeping rats tickles my sense of humour! They all left and bettered themselves and my Great Great gained a trade, a wife and a whole bunch of kids. He obviously knew he was ill before he died - his eldest son requested discharge from the Army six months before he died. He also obviously extracted promises from my Grandfather. Look after your sisters, it is your duty to do right by them, let them follow their hearts and marry as they will and when they will.... They did. My Grandfather was not free himself to follow his own desires for many a year and did not marry until he was in his forties.

My Grandfather died himself when my Father was only just old enough to take on the business and would have known he was dying. I bet he asked my Dad to look after his Mother and my Dad did, although thankfully she didn't live with us! And my Dad to this day looks after all of us. He works hard and does his best to provide.

My family has for generations looked after everyone as best it can, brothers and sisters, down through the generations, even those too poor to even really look after themselves.